
As we grow up, we realize how everything depends on our mindset. Things in our life, how we perceive things, how we feel about situations, and most importantly, how we live our lives and what we choose to do with it. A positive mindset is not about being happy all day long or being joyful and overly happy in life, no matter what situation you find yourself in. A positive mindset has more to do with looking at things in life optimistically and having that perspective in everything, too. It’s about focusing on the good things in life and not letting the bad things get to you so much that you find yourself constantly worried about them.
In this article, let’s walk you through what positivity actually is, how you can cultivate a positive growth mindset, and how you will benefit from it.
What is a Positive Mindset?
A positive mindset or positive thinking is about having a set of emotions and feelings that focuses only on the bright side of life and looks forward to having positive results in things only.
It doesn’t mean that one avoids or ignores the bad or negative things in life that happen. Instead, a positive mindset is all about making the best out of potentially bad or actually bad situations, looking at the brighter side of things, and approaching challenges while keeping a positive outlook in mind. Having a positive mindset means approaching everything that comes into your life with a positive attitude and not letting it overtake your mind, thoughts, feelings, or emotions.
So, now that you know what a positive mindset is, it’s time you develop one. Here’s how you can develop a positive mindset.
Enhancing Your Morning Routine
Your morning is the start of your day. If you have a good morning routine, it’ll follow through your day. Having a good morning routine is not just about waking up on time, doing things in a timely manner, and then showing up to work or college. A morning with a positive mindset is all about looking at the brighter things in life and letting your mind, heart, and body take in that positive energy, too.
- Positive affirmations: starting your day with positive affirmations is a great way to remind yourself of who you truly are not to lose sight of the good even when bad things come your way. Moreover, it is proven that starting your day off with positive affirmations makes you have a better day compared to when you start off your day without them.
- Having breakfast: having breakfast every day when you wake up gives your mind the energy and nutrients that it needs in order to function properly. If you show up somewhere without having breakfast, your mind doesn’t have enough energy to deal with things positively. Instead, your mind ends up taking everything in a negative manner or not taking it into consideration at all, which is also damaging. Therefore, in order to cultivate a positive mindset, it’s important that your brain gets those nutrients. It’s time to start having breakfast every day.
- Prepare things the night before: if you have something important planned for the day, or if you have a certain place where you need to be every day, preparing things the night before can be helpful. Your brain gets a positive sense of feeling when you find everything in its place, where it’s supposed to be. On the other hand, if you have a morning where you’re looking for your stuff, you can’t find the outfit that you had planned to wear that day, or missing your stuff, it can have a negative effect on your mind. So start preparing things beforehand.
- Keep your things organized: this is aligned with the previous point. When your stuff is organized, you know where to look for it. You don’t create a mess while looking for your things, nor do you feel like negative energy is taking over you when your things are organized. You can also use the best life organizer app you can find for yourself to organize things.
Your morning routine defines the start of your day. Do whatever you can to enhance your morning routine, and ultimately your day will be its best too.
Deal With Your Emotions
Your emotions make up what you are. Your emotions are constantly going on in your body, and ultimately in your mind too. If you don’t deal with your emotions, you will constantly hear voices in your head telling you you’re not good enough or let the negative energy get to you.
- Practice gratitude: think about everything that you’re grateful for, and make a list. This can be something like being able to wake up, walking somewhere, having a roof over your head, having privilege, or even having loved ones in your life. Once you’ve made a list, it’s important you acknowledge this list regularly. It will remind you of what you need to be grateful for.
- Keep a journal: everyone gets negative thoughts in their minds all the time. Everyone deals with tough situations that they can’t talk about. It’s important to address these negative thoughts and deal with them so that you don’t feel overburdened with them. Moreover, in order to cultivate a positive mindset, it’s important to keep the negativity out. One way that this negativity can be addressed is by keeping a journal where you can vent everything out.
- Create space: if you instantly feel triggered by something, don’t react instantly. Let it settle in your mind properly first. Let your mind decide logically whether this is something that needs to be taken as seriously or not. Oftentimes, our first reaction is to be hurt by something that doesn’t align with our thoughts or feelings. However, when we think about those situations logically, we realize that we may have overreacted. Dealing with negative emotions by taking a pause or a break is great for a positive growth mindset.
- Practicing mindfulness: being mindful means paying heed to what’s happening inside us and being aware of it. It’s about using your senses in ways to figure out what’s happening around you. Mindfulness keeps you grounded and aware of your feelings and state of mind. When you practice mindfulness, you don’t let your emotions take control of your body. Instead, you learn to take control of your emotions and avoid falling into any negative thinking patterns.
When you deal with your emotions in a healthy manner, you are fostering positive thinking and killing anything that might cause any negative energy or negative feelings in you.
Love Yourself
We often hear people telling us to love ourselves first, then anyone else. It has become very common advice for people to tell us to prioritise ourselves first. But what does it truly mean? And is it actually that easy to love yourself despite knowing everything about yourself?
- Forgive yourself: if you’re someone who beats themselves up for a mistake they’ve made in the past or for treating someone in a certain way that you shouldn’t have, it’s time to forgive yourself. Beating yourself up over your mistakes made in the past creates a negative mindset, which you obviously don’t need. Find ways to forgive yourself and let go.
- Be happy with what you have: it’s human nature to not feel happy with what you have. We always want more and more and never feel satisfied with it. Once you realize this, life becomes easy for you. You may feel like you don’t have much and people around you have more, but you still have a lot that most don’t have. Being happy with what you have and keeping this mindset is a great start for the other things you will have to incorporate into this positive mindset of yours.
- Exercise and meditate: your physical health plays a great role when it comes to cultivating a positive mindset. You need to set measurable fitness goals for yourself so that you keep yourself motivated to exercise and mediate regularly. Meditation is a great way to practice mindfulness and to let those negative thoughts out of your mind. With the help of a balance tracker, you can also track whether your progress is steady or if it needs improvements.
- Be comfortable in your own skin: many people find themselves in a never-ending cycle of not feeling comfortable in their own skin and looking at ways through which they would feel better about themselves. If you find yourself falling into this trap, there isn’t any coming back. As cliché as it may sound, being comfortable in your own skin is the only way to achieve the ultimate happiness in life and to actually love yourself.
- Stop comparing: social media has made it extremely easy to post everything online, and the concept of privacy is probably no longer there. We often find ourselves looking at posts online of our friends, celebrities, and people we know, and we think of how perfect their lives are by looking at carefully selected photos and videos, photoshopped and timed perfectly just for the sake of posting. When we compare our real lives to this fake version of other people’s lives, we’re setting ourselves up for sabotage. Comparison is the thief of joy.
There are countless ways through which you can love yourself either by doing something or by not doing something. Whatever you do, remember that your priority should be you.
Forming and Growing Healthy Relationships
Relationships are the closest most important things in our lives, after ourselves. We spend a lot of time with other humans, and if that time isn’t spend in a positive environment or in a positive relationship, that’s not good for our mindset.
- Cut off toxic people from your life: if you have certain friends with whom you hang out and feel bad or emotionally drained afterward, you need to cut them off. They’re not good for you. You need to hang out with those friends with whom you feel healed. The ones who accept you for who you are. The ones who love you for who you are, and make you feel good about it. If cutting off is not an option, you can always try distancing yourself from them.
- Make new friends: if you don’t think you have a single person in your life who adds a positive influence into your life, it’s time to make new friends. Befriend people who are like-minded and with whom you can share things and feel good about life.
- Make efforts: every relationship requires efforts. Whether it is your partner, friends, or family, you need to put in some effort to make the relationship alive. Check up on your friend and ask them how they’re doing. Do something nice for your loved one. When you make others feel happy, you make yourself feel happy too in the process.
- Be kind to strangers: you never know what someone else may be going through, so never leave a chance to be kind to strangers. Being kind can be something as little as passing a smile to someone, helping them out with a small task, passing on a compliment, and anything else that might hit you in the moment. Everything comes full circle, so if you will be kind to a stranger today, another stranger may be kind to you tomorrow!
Relationships make up a huge part of our lives and have great impacts on our mindsets. Nurturing healthy relationships is not only good for your mental health, but it also contributes to your positive mindset.
Concluding Thoughts
Cultivating a positive mindset has lots of benefits for a person. You feel more secure, resilient, grateful, powerful, hopeful, and overall happy with your life. Your mind and your perspective tell you how to deal with situations, how to take stuff in what way, and they control your emotions and feelings as well. When you have a positive mindset, you also have a positive outlook to life, and what can be better than that?